How a conversation 35 years ago saved a Ghanaian rainforest
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Pat Kenny Show on Newstalk.
Well now I'm joined in studio by marine biologist Cílán Doyle who has waited some 35 years to tell me this story. Cílán, good morning and welcome. Good morning Pat, how are you? I'm very well. Now you and I had a conversation about 35 years ago. What were the circumstances?
What sparked the conversation that led to rainforest preservation?
About 35 years ago and I waited all these years to tell you the story and Now we're not just telling you, but we're getting to tell all your listeners. We had a conversation on air about a proposed adventure of yours. Yeah, so I was, and you have to sort of picture the scene. I was this 17-year-old young marine biologist, and I'd heard this story that there was a part of Ghana that the Americans wanted to set up a hydroelectric power station, and they were going to flood an area the size of Wales, right? Bui National Park. And this area had never been investigated scientifically, so nobody knew what was in this area. A, because it was remote, but it was plagued by the black fly, which causes river blindness.
So all men over 30 were actually blind in this area. My goodness. So I got it into my head, 17, full of the energies and enthusiasm for life that we would like to try and do something about it and where else to go but contact Pat Kenny and of course, you know, there's no emails, there's no, you know, social media so I think we rang a switchboard expecting to be told to take a long jump and next thing we were on live radio with yourself and the nerves and the fear, but you just made us feel so relaxed. And I think the enthusiasm and the passion came across. Now, this was a trip of you and one other person. That was the idea. Two of us, yeah. Students, young, young. Head off into the darkest part of West Africa, if you like.
And I mean dark in the sense of unknown, unexplored. To darken the sense, it was that unknown path that no foreigners had ever, ever visited this area, ever before. So they had never seen a foreign person, a European, an American, an Australian, and let alone a redhead Irishman. So it was a huge undertaking and we just had no idea where we could possibly get funding. Like there was no internet back then, there was no email, there was no mobile phone. So you were just literally shooting in the dark, did the radio interview and went off and I think about two hours later... somebody from the switchboard in the university came to our class and said there was a phone call from the Park Kenny show. Again, that was the only way of contacting.
So we then went back and it was agreed at a certain time that there'd be a phone call made and it turns out that there was a company in Ireland who had listened to the interview and they rang and they wanted to talk to us and that basically set the whole thing rolling. Now, this company had an interest in a particular thing that you might find in this part of Africa. Exactly.
What challenges did the marine biologist face in Ghana?
So they make a product that's a clarifying agent in beer. So it clears beer. And what they use, they use fish collagen, okay? So collagen, fish collagen, every fish has an organ called a swim bladder. And it's like their lungs. So it's used to try to inflate so it can make them rise and fall in the water, okay? But this particular fish that's found in this part of Ghana, It's a catfish and it's got this big skeleton head. It's got a very strong exoskeleton, so it's a heavy fish. So for it to rise in the water, it needs an extra large swim bladder. Which means lots of collagen. Which means lots of collagen. And the people in Africa, they eat every single part of the fish except the swim bladder. That gets discarded.
So their idea was that if we could try and get the local fishermen to keep the swim bladder, to dry them out on top of their huts that they live in, and then we could somehow organise these to be collected... and brought down to the capital and shipped to Ireland. So that, number one, it would give this Irish company a huge resource and source of this collagen. But from my perspective, more importantly, it would give much needed income to these people who, when I say, Pat, they had nothing, they had nothing.
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